1. Technical Field
The invention relates to collating nails, and in particular to a method for collating full round head nails with increased speed by use of a gear driven inclined feed wheel synchronized with a moving conveyor wherein the feed wheel receives the nails in a vertical orientation and delivers them onto the conveyor in a horizontal orientation.
2. Background Information
Collated nails are used in many industrial nailing applications wherein the nails are secured in a continuous web or belt-like condition for automatically feeding the nails into a power driven nailer. These nails are secured in the web by various mechanisms such as welding of a small wire to the spaced nails, connection by hot melt adhesive strips or other substrates for holding the nails in a secure continuously spaced condition along the substrate or feed web.
Various mechanisms are used to arrange the nails in a spaced parallel relationship for subsequent collating onto a supporting substrate or web by various types of apparatus such as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,058,228, 5,140,715 and 4,711,980. Some of these prior art apparatus use a type of indexing and delivery mechanism wherein the nails are fed to a supporting conveyor by an indexing and feed wheel such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,228. However, these devices are used most efficiently with nails having non-rounded heads such as those having a D-shaped head or clipped head, such as shown in the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,228. It has been found difficult to be able to supply and arrange a plurality of round headed nails by the use of such mechanism with sufficient speed to be utilized with a nail collator due to the spacing required between the round headed nails and movement thereof into the spaced parallel relationship required for subsequent bonding to a supporting substrate or web.